


The Shape of Stone

by Selkie_de_Suzie



Category: Trollhunters (Cartoon)
Genre: Romance, Stricklake - Freeform, The Shape of Water AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-01 23:18:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13305468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selkie_de_Suzie/pseuds/Selkie_de_Suzie
Summary: The inevitable Shape of Water AU for Stricklake. Where Barbara is a doctor asked to examine this ageless creature known as a Changeling.





	The Shape of Stone

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a Tumblr Prompt I wrote earlier: 
> 
> But a The Shape of Water AU for Stricklake? Where Barbara is a doctor asked to examine this ageless creature known as a Changeling. “It’s code name is Stricklander. Don’t try to engage with it, Dr. Lake.” 
> 
> But Barbara is a woman who knows that what the rules dictate and what is right do not always coincide. “What would you like to be called?”
> 
> “…my human form was known as Walter Strickler. My…” a small smirk from a fanged mouth, “…friends called me Walt.” 
> 
> “…I’m going to help you, Walt. In any way I can.” 
> 
> And then this happened =)

 

 

She was a doctor, and she knew anatomy.  

Barbara had to remind herself of this when faced with The Asset, remind herself that she had studied and saved many a broken limb or scratched skin before now, had helped and healed countless lives to the best of her ability. And in all those times, she had worked with a clinical concern that had never led to her being overwrought, her natural compassion never getting in the way of her competency. The core of her knowledge had always applied.

_But those had been humans!_  her conscience cried.  _This - **he**  - is something else entirely! _

No, it wasn’t, not really, Barbara thought, furrowing her brow as she hunched over her clipboard, her back already aching and the day only just beginning. Compassion and care was for everything, every _one_. The Asset was no different. She had to believe that, that the same rules still applied. She had taken an oath, for God’s sake.

**_Do no harm._ **

And someone had done it.  _Was_  doing it.

_Natural occurring discolorations_  be damned, she  _knew_  what goddamn bruising and scarring looked like, no matter if the Asset had…skin? stone?  _hide_  the likes of which she had never seen before. Someone was inflicting damage, no,  _abuse_ , to her patient and dammit, she wasn’t going to be fed some cock and bull story and obey instructions to duck her head down and keep her nose clean and her conscience stained.

She had to do  _something._

Wendy wasn’t so sure.

“We don’t even know if that thing can understand you! And you want to spring it?” 

“He isn’t a  _thing_ ,” Barbara countered, handing off the clipboard to a nurse and frowning at her associate. “He has a name, Wendy.”

Wendy sighed, hard and long. “Yeah, and I don’t see you using it, girl.”

“Well—” Barbara faltered. Why  _did_  she not want to call him by his name?

_Codename Stricklander…_

_“I was called Walt…”_

_Maybe because a name makes everything you’ve done for him, **feel**  for him more real, and it scares you to death—_

Barbara bit her lip and focused on Wendy, wide blue eyes scared and stern. “Listen, I know it’s nuts, okay? I  _know_  it. But if I don’t do something, he could die. And I can’t let any patient of mine suffer when I can help it.”

Wendy bit her own lip and sighed again, worry creasing her wide brown face. “Listen, I get it, girl, I do. You and this thing have some kind of bond going on. But he’s locked up here for a freaking reason, Barbara! What if he’s tricking you? Inflicting the wounds on himself, get your sympathy? You heard what Mr. Bular said, the…” she stopped and swallowed, pronouncing the next words as if she was holding a bitter pill on her tongue, “…the  _changelings_ …they’re intelligent enough to use manipulation, lies…”

She ran a hand over her curls, looking up at her friend with worried eyes. “He could be doing that to you, girl. You gotta be careful. You got a big heart, Barbara, but you need to close it off in this case, let the dissection go ahead—”

“This isn’t dissection, this is murder,” Barbara hissed furiously, glaring at Wendy. “And I am  _not_ going to participate in it! I’m going to help him with or without your help, Wendy, but if you do nothing, then our friendship is nothing too!”

With that she stormed away, clutching her clipboard like a life saver, her heartbeat hammering against it.

She was a doctor, she knew anatomy. And she wasn’t afraid to amputate when the need was pressing enough, dearly beloved though the limb may be. She had done it before, she could do it again.  

* * *

She was a doctor, she knew anatomy.

Now if only she knew the lay of this lab just as well–! 

Thank God Wendy had come around so quickly, though her constant mutters of “ _We’re gonna die, we’re gonna die, we’re gonna get fired and then we’re gonna die…!”_ as they pushed the gurney containing Walt’s prone formhadn’t helped with Barbara’s already tense nerves.

But the mysterious man – Otto, he had called himself – had been an unexpected help, disabling the cameras and triggering the alarm so that people would rush elsewhere in the lab. “Get him out, get him free. Janus needs him unharmed, Dr. Lake.”

She hadn’t even been able to ask who the hell was Janus before the sirens had started blaring, the place flooded in red flashes. And then she and Wendy had been running, her heart in her throat as they navigated the twisting labyrinth of the hallways, pushing the gurney along until they had reached Wendy’s minivan—

— “I get involved with some Ocean’s Eleven shit and of course I have to use a fucking  _minivan_ ”—

—and driving free of the lab’s parking lot, the gunshots ringing in the night behind them making Barbara squeeze Walt’s shoulder and Wendy curse, her foot slamming onto the accelerator. Her nails scratched against stone, and there was a murmur, a bitten off moan.

Barbara started and looked down in time to see Walt stirring, blinking dazed amber eyes, the blood still flowing freely from the scar that lacerated across his scalp, disappearing up into his hair.  When he spoke, his voice was guttural and groggy, his fangs flashing in the half-lights of the streetlamps outside. “Wh…what…h-happened…?”

_—I came into the lab and saw you covered in blood and decided damn it all, I was going to save you here and now and now my colleague and best friend is joyriding us in her minivan and trying to get you home so I can hide you in my basement and it’s all because I mess things up and I said screw it to only clinical concern when it comes to you—_

Barbara bit her lip and settled for stroking a hand across his brow, wishing she had some gauze for his wounds, so many of them, so much blood. “We escaped from the lab,” she murmured to him, keeping her eyes on his lamp-like yellow ones. “We’re going home to my place. I’m gonna help you, Walt, just like I said.”

He closed his eyes at that and gave a gravely sigh, and oh God, she wants to help him  _so_  much—

How had she come to care for him so much, so soon—?

The collar was still locked on him, there hadn’t been time to find the key for it, and the words of her first day flooded back to her.  _“The collar locks him into this state. Without it, he regains the ability to hide this form, to morph in and out. Without this collar, he can look as human as the rest of us.”_

_As human as the rest of us…_

Barbara set her jaw as she took her lab coat and ripped the sleeve of it away, pressing it to Walt’s forehead. She was a doctor, and she had thought she known the anatomy of humanity’s capacity for cruelty and compassion after all her years helping people, but tonight was proving her right in wrong in ways she could have never known.

If humans did this to something as strange and beautiful and intelligent as Walt, then humanity could bite her ass and count her out.

* * *

She was a doctor, she knew anatomy.  

Barbara tried to stop herself from trembling before him, a feat not helped what with how she was wearing only her nightgown. “Walt…”

He merely watched her with those eyes, his claws scratching at the stone of the floor he lay on, his horns curving away from his face in a graceful, beautiful arc. She loved his horns – ringed and textured like the unicorns of the fantasy stories she read in her youth, reminding her of beautiful and strange creatures not of her world…

_Not of her world…_

And she so wanted to share her world,  _herself,_ with him.

She took the deepest breath she could and let it out as the nightgown dropped to the floor in a silent silken rumple before stepping to him, her hair loose across her back, her glasses gone.

Walt stood suddenly, towering over her, and she would have stopped walking had it not been for the look in his eyes, on his face, as he drank her in, her naked form, her very barest self. It was a wonder that the basement didn’t ring with the echo of her heart, it beat so…

His fangs flashed in the half-light of the basement as he spoke, soft and slow, like gravel sinking through water. “Barbara…”

When he reached for her, claws gleaming, she met him willingly, stepping into his arms and winding her own around his neck as best she could, bringing his face to hers, his mouth to her own.

She was a doctor, after all.

And she would know  _his_ anatomy.

 

 


End file.
